Peter Fisk

With the largest LED screen in the world, the new $2 billion Sphere venue in Las Vegas blows your mind. When U2 opened the doors for the first time, then it just gets even better.

The New York Times headlined “this is peak humanity” while CNN just said “wow, wow, wow.”

Or as Bono said “First we played clubs, then we played the biggest stadia, and now we play cathedrals.”

Ever since the colossal satellite screens of Zoo TV first crash landed into our consciousness in the early 90s, U2 have consistently pushed the technological envelope to the very edge whether that be by erecting huge LED screens, giant lemons, and more.

Now, they’ve made the much hyped Las Vegas Sphere – a $2.3bn, 18,000 seater sci-fi structure which boasts 160,000 speakers and a 54,000 m²  wraparound LED screen you’ve ever seen in your life – their new home for the next few months.

Designed by Populous (the global architectural and design practice specialising in sports facilities, arenas and convention centres), the Sphere project started development in 2018, was disrupted by Covid, but finally opened today.

U2 will perform 25 dates at the venue through to December, with the Sphere’s future to include sports events, music performances and more.

 

When Lionel Messi lifted the World Cup for Argentina, it felt like a fitting end to a glorious career.

The football star, for many the GOAT (greatest of all time), had done it all – a record seven Ballon d’Or awards as the world’s best player. He had spent almost his entire professional career with Barcelona, where he won a club record of 34 trophies, including ten La Liga titles, seven Copa del Rey titles and the Champions League four times. For the last two seasons he had moved to Paris St Germain, and then finally in 2022, he captained his beloved Argentina to win the FIFA World Cup.

Since July this year, when the football player announced his move to new and underachieving  US soccer team Inter Miami, the city – and much of America too – has been gripped by the dazzling star. His flamingo pink club jersey has become ubiquitous.

Messi’s face is everywhere: on gigantic murals, billboards, public transport and television adverts. Messi wares are being hawked on street corners and in every novelty store and sports outfitter in the city. Beach bars are serving Messi Mojitos, the Hard Rock Cafe offers the Messi Chicken Sandwich and Messi Burger, and a local brewery is selling pale pink cans of GOAT 10 beer (he wears the No 10 jersey for Inter Miami, as he has for most of his career).

On the pitch, Messi, 36, has had an instant impact on the club, which plays in the Major League Soccer (MLS) league and is co-owned by David Beckham, himself once the biggest thing in US football. It took the former England captain years to mould LA Galaxy into contenders but Messi has already turned perhaps the worst team in the league into perhaps the best.

DRV PNK Stadium, the club’s temporary home in Fort Lauderdale while it scrambles to build its own, is sold out for every game and in the VIP suites the Beckhams are rubbing shoulders with the likes of  LeBron James, Serena Williams, and Puff Daddy.

Off the pitch, the Messi effect has proved even more spectacular. At the beginning of the summer, Inter Miami’s Instagram account had one million followers. It now has 15 million, not just more than any of its league rivals but more than any ice hockey, baseball or American football team and all but three US basketball teams.

Since Messi’s first game against Cruz Azul in July, where standing-room tickets started at nearly $900, average ticket prices have increased by more than 500%, from $110 to $690. That Messi effect extends across the league, at every stadium he travels to. Ticket prices for the match between Inter Miami and Los Angeles FC last Sunday set a record as the most expensive in MLS history — roughly $900 for the cheapest option. Official and knock-off Messi jerseys have been on backorder for months.

Messi has also transformed the business model of the MLS. His surprise move to the US was made possible with a unique deal. Would just offering money be enough to attract a player who ranked second in 2023 on Forbes’ list of the world’s highest-paid athletes at $130 million?

Messi’s 2½-year deal with Inter Miami is “worth up to $150 million total from his salary, signing bonus, and equity in the team” according to the club, securing a piece of the club’s ownership on retiring. However the real commercial sweetener was the commercial rights – Messi will get a significant share of all sign-up fees for Apple TV, the MLS streaming service, and also a share of all Adidas merchandise sales, Adidas being the existing sponsor of Inter Miami, and a long-time sponsor of Messi.

Before the American move, Messi had earned around $120 million annually, which placed hime marginally behind Cristiano Ronaldo in the football world. However Messi is a far more likeable personality, and with a move to the heart of America’s Latin community, he could really exploit his popularity.

Last year, in addition to his Paris St Germain salary of $65 million, GeniusWorks analysis shows that he earned around $55 million annually from brand endorsements (Adidas, Huawei, Gatorade, MasterCard, Lay’s, Pepsi, Hawkers, Ooredoo, Gillette, Turkish Airlines). That figure, now with additional deals and income streams, will grow significantly.

The 35 year old’s net wealth of around $600 million, is also bolstered by investments in his own branded merchandise, which can be bought at The Messi Store plus a property portfolio and digital investments.

Around his birthplace of Rosario in Argentina, for example, he has put money into the Azahares del Parana project (a set of gated communities out of the city) as well as an apartment building in the city centre. Other investments include dipping his toe into the worlds of cryptocurrency and NFTs, working in partnership with Ethernity.

More

• All About Brands 
• 250 Innovative Brands
• Brand Innovation by Peter Fisk
• Building Brands like Pixar make Movies by Peter Fisk
• The Brand World Cup 2022 by Peter Fisk

Bagsværd is a 25 minute drive northwards from Copenhagen’s Kastrup airport.

When you arrive, there is nothing but Novo Nordisk. A sprawling campus of the Danish pharmaceutical giant that has grown rapidly over the years as a world leader in diabetes care.

Novo Nordisk was founded in 1923. Novo’s origins can be traced back to the collaboration of two Danish pharmacists, August Krogh and August Kongsted, who established Nordisk Insulinlaboratorium (Nordic Insulin Laboratory). Over the last century Novo has become primarily known for its work in the field of diabetes treatments. It develops and manufactures a wide range of diabetes medications, including insulin, as well as devices such as insulin pens and pumps.

This week Novo Nordisk’s miracle weight-loss drug Wegovy gained approval for use in the UK: for private patients and, on the NHS, for those with a BMI over 35 (or in exceptional case,  over 30).

The Danish company’s market cap has dramatically risen to $428 billion, making it the largest company in Europe, overtaking the luxury goods giant LVMH, and bigger than the rest of Denmark’s annual GDP.

All because of an accidental discovery.

In 2017 its new drug for diabetics, Ozempic, was approved. But those taking it noticed their appetites seemed to disappear and they were losing weight. Ozempic contains semaglutide, which mimics a naturally occurring hormone, GLP-1, that makes us feel full after a meal, telling the body that no more food is needed.

Ozempic has transformed Novo, and potentially the future of millions of people too.

The market for weight loss drugs is estimated at $100 billion. Celebrities like Elon Musk have given it a go. In July 12 million units of Ozempic were sold. Yet demand far exceeds supply.  Diabetes patients faced shortages because so many more people wanted to get their hands on Ozempic. An estimated 415 million people have type 2 diabetes worldwide. Over 1 billion people are obese.

Wegovy, which delivers a different dose of the same active ingredient, was created by Novo Nordisk in response to this stratospheric demand. The rapid growth has also come with concerns about side effects, particularly as the communication has spread virally, beyond the normal medical world. There are also ethical discussions about who deserves the limited supplies most.

Other pharma companies have woken up to the opportunity too.  Eli Lilly and Pfizer have their own semaglutides. But the demand is so high, supply so short, that this should not damage Novo Nordisk any time soon. Indeed this could be just the beginning for semaglutides. They are also showing promising results when it comes to treating cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease and Alzheimer’s.

It sounds like a Hollywood movie, as an old and steady company suddenly discovers a wonder drug. How Novo can capitalise on the approach will be interesting.

The discovery reminds me of Viagra, another blockbuster drug, when the side-effects of another fairly routine drug development were realised to have huge applications in other areas. The brand Viagra was able to transform minds, business models, and sex lives. Of course there are few obese people in Denmark, but the small nation with a national GDP less than the market cap of Novo, is already feasting on one of its longest established companies.

Novo Nordisk also made it into TIME magazine’s most influential companies of 2023:

As the world changes, how do we move forwards?

Innovation has never been a more urgent or important challenge, in business and society. How can organisation reimagine themselves in rapidly changing markets, with new tech capabilities, new customer demands and social expectations? How can society embrace new thinking to solve the biggest challenges from climate change to healthcare crisis?

Yet for too many companies, a quick workshop on Design Thinking, and maybe a few Idea Sprints, feel like enough to convince them that they are innovating. Too often, these become the high energy workshops that can also be called Innovation Theatre. They look and feel good at first, but do they really deliver results?  Do they drive significant progress, and value creation?

Yes, we absolutely need energising and inspiring, but innovation also needs discipline. A disciplined process to capture fragile ideas, to ensure that are relevant to customers, to connect them into bolder concepts, to accelerate them into and within the market, to ensure they deliver commercial and user impact, for society too, and to sustain a portfolio of such concepts so they they keep flowing.

You can read more about my best new ideas for business, plus new innovation and future thinking here .

Here are some of the new books, research and projects that have inspired me this year:

The Performance Paradox: Turning the Power of Mindset into Action by Eduardo Briceño of Mindset Works tackles the counterintuitive phenomenon that if we focus only on performance, our performance suffers. To avoid falling into this trap, Eduardo sets out his innovative and refreshing framework of balancing learning and performing. He builds on the Growth Mindset principles of colleague Carol Dweck.

Flux: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change by April Rinne, explores eight mindset shifts that flip conventional ideas about leadership, success, and wellbeing. These ‘flux superpowers’ include getting lost, running slower, and knowing your ‘enough.’ The book is all about helping individuals and organisations rethink and reshape their relationship with change and uncertainty. “When everything is in flux, like it is today, everything can benefit from a Flux Mindset” she says.

Ideaflow: The Only Business Metric That Matters by Stanford d.school’s Perry Klebahn and Jeremy Utley, which demonstrates how to establish daily creativity practice to unleash innovation within individuals and organisations. Innovation, they argue, is not event; it’s a practice. Ideaflow offers a tried and tested framework to boost the flow of ideas and breakthrough results to solve business problems.

Decision Sprint: The New Way to Innovate Into the Unknown and Move from Strategy to Action by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Atif Rafiq, presents a practical model for accelerating team-based problem solving. A roadmap for turning ideas into action, in Decision Sprint Atif debunks the belief that speed and accuracy need to be mutually exclusive and shows how business can move faster and smarter on their most important ideas.

Going On Offense: A Leader’s Playbook for Perpetual Innovation by Stanford’s Behnam Tabrizi, which explores the key ingredients that fuel the mindsets of firms dedicated to relentless experimentation. Drawing on his rigorous seven-year research, in Going On Offense Behnam reveals the transformative drivers of success in multiple innovative organisations, including several of the big tech giants.

Think Bigger: How to Innovate by Sheena Iyengar asks the timeless question, “How can I get my best ideas?” By debunking some of the popular concepts surrounding creativity, including brainstorming, Think Bigger provides a step-by-step framework for entrepreneurs, leaders, innovators – and everyone – to think more effectively and grow their ideas. As a roadmap for innovation and guide to creative thinking, Think Bigger lays the groundwork for addressing some of the world’s most pressing problems.

Autonomous Transformation: Creating a More Human Future in the Era of Artificial Intelligence by Brian Evergreen, former global head of Autonomous AI Co-Innovation at Microsoft Research, weaves together strategy, management thinking, economics, systemic design, and philosophy into actionable steps for managers seeking to harness AI for the betterment of their organisation and the world.

The Innovation Mindset: A Proven Method to Fuel Performance and Results by Jennifer Kenny focuses on practices that drive innovation across an entire business ecosystem, The Innovation Mindset argues that ‘human innovation’ is the missing link for enhancing individual and team innovation capacity. The book outlines Jennifer’s Six Step Practice Model, which starts with uncovering the innovative drive within yourself and then harnessing it to build a cooperative ecosystem designed to unleash new discoveries.

Beyond Disruption: Innovate and Achieve Growth without Displacing Industries, Companies, or Jobsby INSEAD’s Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, redefines and expands the existing view of innovation by introducing a new approach: nondisruptive creation. Just as Blue Ocean Strategy redefined the essence of strategy as creating not competing, Beyond Disruption provides a powerful new blueprint for how innovators and businesses can avoid destruction and create both economic and social value – to tackle new sets of challenges not addressed by existing industries, and for companies to grow whilst also being a force for good.

Engineering Our Dreams, is an active research project on AI, AR, and VR by Martin Lindstrom, who has engaged 1,000 volunteers in the metaverse for six months,  to better understand human behaviour, and the role of businesses, brands. A key finding of the research is determining how brands, branding, and the influence of brands over consumers will be forever altered, given the new insights into what typical lifestyles will look like in 2035 as a result of VR and AI.

We live in an incredibly dynamic world – technologies emerge at exponential speed, consumers gain new experiences and aspirations, new entrants and business models disrupt every market – and change continues to accelerate.

Apple recently soared beyond $3 trillion in market valuation, Tesla’s new supercomputer added $600 billion to its value, SpaceX now launches and returns rockets everyday, Virgin Galactic does it for fun, Temu is now the world’s largest retail brand, Open AI is now on its fourth iteration since ChatGPT, and AI supermodel Noonoouri has just launched her number one hit single.

Meanwhile in the banking world, there is much slower change.

In a world where data is key, where most of Apple’s 52% value growth in 2023 has been due to services (and consumer finance, with Goldman Sachs, including its savings account now has over $10 billion in consumer deposits), banks would seem like natural platforms to reinvent their own, and almost every other industry.

Some banks, like Singapore’s DBS, have gone a long way in this thinking, within its “invisible banking” strategy to embed banking (and therefore financial transactions, data and relationships) into every aspect of people’s lives (partnering with retail, transport, health) etc. More often, it has been start-ups like the superapps (Grab or Jio, Rappi or WeChat) that have realised the connecting potential of finance, and then developed a next generation of finance platforms.

But most banks have struggled to change. Largely through mindset, inertia, and arrogance. It amazes me how many banks still expect customers to come to them. Yes they want to make queues shorter, apps convenient, and brands seem friendly. But it’s still largely within the context that banks do what they’ve always done.

Add to this, is banks’ seemingly bizarre insistence on not seeing the new breed of banks – neo, mobile, fintech – as being of the same world. Fintech? Do retailers really call digitally-enabled stores as retail tech, or do they just recognise that they are real competitors, and ultimately every retailer needs to digitalise or die? Of course they do. There is no such thing as health tech, just health. There is no such thing as media tech, just media. And so on. Fintech? Pah ….

Maybe it’s not surprising that payment systems like Visa, and even Paypal, outperform almost every bank today in terms of value creation. Investors, despite coming from the same world, don’t apparently have faith in the future of banks.

So where do we see banking innovation?

Global Finance magazine is seen as one of the most recognised sources, and rankings, of the world’s most innovative banks. This is how it sees innovation, and who it sees innovating best in 2023:

“While innovation isn’t always tied to technology, in recent years developments in AI, distributed ledger and cloud computing have made tech the driving force of innovation, especially in the finance sector. Banks need to work smarter and provide a wider range of services to their customers. Financial institutions have been moving to address the challenge. Last year, the global retail banking industry was on target to spend $250 billion on technology, according to Celent, which projects that IT spend to rise around 5% per year, and hit $308 billion by 2027. The types of technologies that financial institutions are betting on are a blend of new and old, but the applications are unique. Many are focusing on artificial intelligence and in particular, machine learning. Whether in products developed in a lab, incubator, or accelerator, or through the bank’s own technology department, AI has been an integral tool in areas such as fraud detection, data security, call center management, and back-office processes like SWIFT messaging.

Banks are improving and simplifying processes so that they require less time and reduce carbon footprints. Processes and services increasingly incorporate biometrics to identify customers remotely. Others are aimed at eliminating paper and further embracing the digital world through digital know-your-customer (KYC) functions that facilitate opening new accounts for existing clients by leveraging existing customer data. Along with KYC functions, banks are innovating to assist anti-money laundering compliance as new laws tighten up, creating a need to align data security with the new legal regime.

Commercial customers need more services. Digital portals and cash management applications help them manage their finances, and banks with existing products are looking to add functionality such as access to third-party systems for enterprise resource planning and human resources and AI-powered insights into cash flows and reconciliations. Banks are also continuing to develop APIs that connect systems and data.

Financial institutions are looking  at ways to bolster the SME sector, critical to so many economies, including training entrepreneurs to successfully operate their businesses and obtain funding from banks. Many banks focuse on developing women entrepreneurs because research shows women’s engagement has profound impact on the wider economy and their communities.

Many established banks are embracing a startup culture, encouraging staff to think through new solutions to age-old problems and develop new products. It’s not just about making life easier for customers or eliminating pain points for employees; innovation often leads to savings in time and money for both employees and customers. Banks can do more with less.

Innovation doesn’t happen overnight, however. “It’s an iterative process, Nick Kerrigan, head of innovation execution at SWIFT, said during a recent LinkedIn Live session. “The more we can learn from each other, the better.”

World’s Most Innovative Banks 2023

• Bank of America
• DBS
• HSBC
• JP Morgan
• SEB

Last year, Bank of America (BofA) spent just over $11 billion on technology and enjoyed another record-breaking year for patents granted. BofA continued to push innovation, with 608 new patents—a 19% increase year over year—covering artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), information security, data analytics, mobile banking and payments, and making it one of our top five picks for most innovative bank of 2023.

BofA boasts 70,000 technologists globally—roughly a third of its workforce—yet it does not have an innovation lab. “We don’t want individuals to think innovation is just for a single group of people,” says Andrew McKibben, international head of BofA’s Technology & Operations. “Every person is empowered to innovate.”

BofA also promotes innovation by encouraging varied approaches to problem-solving. “If we create enough diversity [of thought], from a productivity perspective we will benefit,” McKibben argues. “We’re also really focused on neurodiversity conditions, as a broader selection of employees will often see problems in very different ways.”

BofA’s Global Transaction Services business has been particularly busy over the past year, implementing innovations for corporate treasury teams aimed at optimizing working capital.

“With so much innovation occurring, it takes a team like ours that is 100% focused on payments innovation to help identify the solution that could have the most impact on a company’s treasury operations and bottom line,” says Faiz Ahmad, head of BofA’s Global Transaction Services. “Not all companies are at the same point in their technology evolution.”

Last year, the bank introduced Pay by Bank, which enables customers of e-commerce companies, initially in the UK, to pay directly from their bank account; IXP (international cross-border payments), which uses distributed ledger technology to enable near real-time initiation and disbursement of low-value, high-volume cross-border payments; and a simplified sign-on method called CashPro QR Sign-on.

Meanwhile, BofA’s wealth management team is modernizing how people find a financial adviser with Merrill Advisor Match, because, as Jennifer Auerbach-Rodriguez, head of Merrill’s client acquisition and strategic growth initiatives, says, “not everyone has an adviser in their personal network.”

DBS

With wins in nine award categories this year, DBS has not lost its appetite for innovation. Even more impressive, the nominations honored multiple areas of the bank, putting this Asian powerhouse among the world’s most innovative banks yet again.

Middle-office technology rarely gets noticed but has huge potential for impact. Finding no off-the-shelf solution in the marketplace, DBS developed AutoFin (automated financial analysis), which leverages computer vision, natural language processing and deep learning technologies to ease the analysis and client writing tasks so that relationship managers can spend more time nurturing client relationships. The DBS Data Protection Analytics team now deploys ML and data visualization to detect misuse and abuse of customer information. And the bank’s Geolocation Real-Time Fraud Detection is an industry-first tool that cross-checks customer locations with the point-of-sale terminals where payment transactions occur.

User experience was another fertile area of innovation at DBS last year. The bank built an API to automate manual processing and provide instant updates to customers. The Intelligent Business Process Manager is the first API in banking to consolidate and incorporate different technologies, systems and platforms. The digitization of a consumer banking customer’s journey, meanwhile, is Singapore’s first digital application and onboarding vehicle for unsecured financial products such as renovation loans and debt consolidation.

Finally, the DBS Digital Currency Unit in the fall unveiled DBS Purpose Bound Money, Singapore’s first programmable money built on a public blockchain, which enables a client to program, launch and distribute conditional vouchers.

HSBC

HSBC launched three major innovations last year, covering market trading, bond issuance and trade finance—the three pillars of the bank’s core objective of “opening up a world of opportunity” for clients. HSBC AI Markets is the first natural language–based system that generates bespoke cross-asset data and analytics on the financial markets alongside pricing and execution, delivered over a variety of digital channels. The system aims address four pain points: access to liquidity and content, access to data, automation and insights. AI Markets provides on-demand analytics, execution and market intelligence to both internal HSBC staff and external clients.

Introduced in the fall, HSBC Orion is a proprietary tokenization platform that uses blockchain technology to issue digital bonds. Last fall, HSBC Trade Solutions (HTS) was launched in partnership with CGI, allowing clients to originate and manage all their trade finance products online. HTS leverages an API-native, modular design and flexible tech stack as the backbone of the bank’s market-leading trade offering, supporting $800 billion of global trade per year. Already deployed in the UK and Hong Kong, HTS is now being introduced to additional markets across the HSBC network.

JPMorgan Chase

JPMorgan Chase’s technology spend in 2022 was $14 billion, of which approximately half was dedicated to investments—a substantial commitment to developing new services for the bank’s 62 million digitally active mobile users.

In his annual letter to shareholders, Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon said that AI and the raw data that feeds it will be critical to the bank’s future success. In addition to a 200-person AI research group headed by Manuela Veloso, who previously led the ML department at Carnegie Mellon University, JPMorgan employs over 1,000 people in data management, more than 900 data scientists and 600 ML engineers. The bank also boasts 300 AI use cases in production for risk, prospecting, marketing, customer experience, fraud prevention, payments processing and money movement systems.

“We’re imagining new ways to augment and empower employees with AI through human-centered collaborative tools and workflow, leveraging tools like large language models, including ChatGPT,” Dimon wrote. With that in mind, JPMorgan has spent over $2 billion building new, cloud-based data centers and modernizing many of its applications—and their related databases—to run in both public and private cloud environments.

A partnership with QC Ware, a quantum-computing-as-a-service firm, is helping pave the way for the bank to incorporate quantum computing into its deep hedging activities. JPMorgan, Toshiba and Ciena Build, meanwhile, have joined forces to secure the bank’s mission-critical blockchain applications using the first quantum key distribution network.

Also last year, J.P. Morgan Wealth Management launched Wealth Plan, a free, digital money coach that gives clients a fuller picture of their finances and helps them plan, save and invest, and will be available for free to all Chase customers in the top-ranked Chase Mobile app and at Chase.com.

SEB

Sweden’s SEB established an innovation lab back in 2018, called SEBx and headed by Christoffer Malmer, who was broadly tasked with exploring new technology and building products. At the time, banking-as-a-service and embedded finance were not yet widely recognized concepts, he recalls, but this was exactly what SEBx developed.

“We put together a technology platform that we built in Google Cloud,” says Malmer. “It’s a cloud-native infrastructure, and we said from the beginning, whatever we’re building here, we should be able to share it both to internal distributors as well as external ones.”

The bank began using the platform to build a next generation of mobile apps for its younger customers and launched the external offering last year. Its first customer was Swedish retail conglomerate Axel Johnson, which wanted to build customer engagement for its various brands via a card loyalty scheme. Axel Johnson’s fintech startup, Humla, built the user experience, but everything banking related runs via APIs housed in SEB’s platform.

“We do the sanction screening, the financial monitoring, and the fraud prevention. We also constantly interact with [the customer] to make sure that things are in order,” Malmer says. “If you look at the retailer’s mobile app, however, you won’t see SEB mentioned anywhere: it’s an account-as-a-service, it’s a card-as-a-service, it’s a payment-as-a-service.”

SEB sees embedded finance as a natural development, since the technology has moved to a point where it can be implemented in a seamless, easy-to-use way. Driving the process is customer behavior and, to some extent, regulation. “When you take an Uber ride, you don’t pull out your wallet,” says Malmer. “You don’t make any payments, not even an approval. You just take the ride and step out of the car because that transaction is completely embedded, which is tremendously convenient.”

More new value propositions will be hitting the marketplace in relatively short order, Malmer predicts, noting a flurry of activity from fintechs aimed at facilitating embedded finance. SEB has an advantage, he adds, since it has the balance sheet, the capital, and is used to dealing with regulators, which add up to a higher risk tolerance and high standards for integrity and security. “We aspire to blend the best of both worlds,” he says.

The Middle East regional winner, Mashreq digitized its operations, developing new capacities in compliance, marketing and sales, and enhanced efficiencies. The bank’s digital onboarding product requires just a single page and one-time signature, obviating the need to provide documentation for each new account. Mashreq is the first bank in the UAE to onboard clients using this process, which is particularly useful for large clients with multiple businesses who may have dozens of accounts.

Internally, Mashreq leverages AI to identify prospects based on their transactions and to identify relationships between groups or buyers and suppliers. This information boosts network and relationship-building by creating a source for qualified leads that can be segmented by geography, industry sector and banking category (conventional or Islamic). Mashreq further uses AI to curate news so that employees can keep abreast of specific sectors to make better-informed decisions.

Finally, the bank’s FIKYC and paperless eKYC products are the first of their kind in the UAE. FIKYC centralizes the KYC function for financial institution clients. Now, Mashreq maintains one record for a financial institution that has multiple accounts across its global network; and the bank automatically emails customers when there’s missing information or documentation. Customers undergoing the KYC process can submit their forms through a secure digital portal and receive automatic notifications when their KYC certification is about to expire.

Latin America edged ahead of many other regions in its embrace of blockchain technology, and Colombia’s Banco Davivienda is one of its leading practitioners. In September 2022, it became Latin America’s first bank to issue a financial bond on a blockchain—a collaboration between Davivienda and the Inter-American Development Bank, with additional support from the Central Bank of Colombia and the Financial Superintendence of Colombia. The $110 million issuance in the primary market was underwritten by Davivienda. It followed a proof-of-concept exercise conducted with JP Morgan in 2019. The technology—basically a decentralized, digital ledger—allows full traceability over the bond’s life and includes a nonfungible token that is a digital representation of a physical bond.

And somewhat related to this, Davivienda became in September 2022 the region’s first platform to accept cryptocurrency bitcoin as payment for household, health and real estate services. Most local merchants don’t accept cryptocurrencies, nor are they widely used for payment in Colombia. In the bank’s view, this represented a new opportunity and now it offers a fast and secure way to pay for these household services with bitcoin, starting at 10,000 Colombian pesos (about $2.13).

World’s Most Innovative “Fintechs” 2023

• JUMO
• MONET
• Pomelo
• SmartStream
• Thought Machine

A South African technology company that develops tools for next-generation financial inclusion in emerging markets, Jumo in October launched VELA, a pioneering asset management engine built to give investors access to social-impact investments with a high standard of governance and control. ­­

Underpinning VELA are Jumo’s artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities, which enable it to allocate multicurrency funds—US dollars and cryptocurrency—to select portfolios. Qualified investors can put money to work alongside pan-African banks and watch it perform in real time.

Working with pan-African banks and mobile money partners in six African markets, Jumo is helping supply capital to small businesses in Africa. To date, the Jumo platform has been used to make 130 million loans, totaling $4 billion, to more than 20 million people and small businesses in Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and Côte d’Ivoire.

The branded content industry—everything from sports uniforms to Disney figurines to print advertising campaigns to celebrity endorsements— is estimated to be worth $100 billion worldwide, although there is no agreed-upon definition for this constantly evolving space. Digital brand creators, who canny brands have discovered are far nimbler than slow moving advertising agencies, thanks to their ability to garner cyber clicks have to fight a lot harder for timely payment of brand dollars.

This is where MONET, a UK-headquartered B2B fintech player comes in—offering a modern invoice factoring platform for creator businesses who earn online via brands and monetization platforms.

In May of 2022, a beta launch of Monet’s revenue-based lending platform offered dedicated Creator Business debit cards and accounts for creators, providing an infrastructure for advertising agencies and influencer platforms to extend working capital finance to their globally distributed suppliers, and earning MONET a spot among the world’s most innovative fintechs.

Facilitating MONET’s platform is Weavr, an embedded finance specialist that provides business banking and payments infrastructure. MONET pays creators upfront on what they are owed from brand deals and platform earnings, pushing funds directly into the creator’s dedicated MONET current account, where they also receive 1% cash back on all business spending. MONET’s white label EarlyPay product, meanwhile, enables agencies and platforms to pay creators early, in their own branded solution.

Over 300 creator businesses joined the beta launch in the first month, while 7,500 creative businesses are on the wait list.

Founded in April 2021, Pomelo is building Latin America’s first regional fintech infrastructure platform, allowing companies to launch digital accounts and issue prepaid, debit, credit, crypto and corporate cards—among others—to their users and business customers. The Argentine company currently operates in six markets—Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Chile and Peru. It serves over 100 clients, including banks and tech unicorns such as Bitso; a Mexican crypto exchange; Rappi, a Colombian on-demand delivery startup; and Stori, a fintech that offers credit card products to underserved populations.

“Pomelo was designed to remove the largest pain points in the industry,” says Gastón Irigoyen, CEO and co-founder, “while allowing for modern use cases and meeting the technical requirements of technology companies and large enterprises operating in more traditional industries such as banking, retail, energy, real estate and agriculture.”

Pomelo’s infrastructure enables companies to launch and scale financial services within weeks, he says, “dramatically improving their go-to-market as well as saving years of work, thousands of people and millions of dollars. A single API-based integration with Pomelo allows any company to develop a regional fintech business with the highest standards of cybersecurity and compliance.”

Pomelo’s platform attracted $60 million in investment in the company’s first 18 months. The attraction is its promise to solve many of the problems that nag Latin America’s expensive, highly fragmented payments infrastructure, providing a better experience for end users and helping the region’s fintechs to grow.

SmartStream Air V.7.0 was launched in the fall by the London-headquartered financial transaction management solutions provider of the same name. It uses AI technology for an intuitive, easy-to-use automated version of a common back-office function: reconciliations for exception management.

While UX is the mainstay of front-end operations, the back end is often overlooked, and Air V.7.0 made Smartstream the first recipient of a Red Dot Design Award for back-office financial applications.

Elena Savitskaya, director of User Experience and Design at Smartstream, points to the currently pressing challenges of cost reduction and talent retention at a time when “the quality of digital experiences we have come to expect outside of work is now also expected at work.” Self-service back-office platforms help employees achieve more, she adds, “all while having a positive experience within the solution, removing friction and frustration.”

Better UX in the back office means staff can focus on work with higher added value, Savitskaya says, while a gentle learning curve facilitates employee development, reducing workforce churn. “High user adoption rates driven by outstanding user experiences ultimately support the increasingly difficult-to-manage human factor in digital transformation success.”

Vault Core, Thought Machine’s cloud-native core banking platform, enables banks to build and launch any financial product. Launched last year, Vault Payments provides a single platform on which institutions can run all their payments for every method, scheme and region worldwide—a bold move for a fintech. The goal, says COO Gareth Richardson, is to “significantly optimize the entire payment lifecycle for banks and their end customers.”

The London-based fintech’s larger aim is to extend Vault Core’s model into the payments space, which Richardson says it can transform in the same way it has core infrastructure. “Customers now expect digital-first, real-time, personalized services,” he notes. “Only by moving to modern, cloud-native technology will banks be able to meet these demands and stay ahead of the competition.”

Built from scratch as a cloud-native payments processing platform, Vault Payments is scalable, highly configurable and can operate in real time, according to Richardson. It represents payments as ISO20022 messages, he adds, and its rails-based configuration approach will support any payment type, card or payment scheme as compatibility expands. The platform can integrate any financial product with the Mastercard network through a payment routing mechanism and can be adopted as a standalone product and integrated into a variety of core banking systems.

World’s Best Financial Innovations 2023

• CargoWALLET by CargoAi
• Use of blockchain to advance responsible AI by FICO
• Fioneer Embedded Finance as a Service by SAP Fioneer
• Interlinking CBDCs for seamless cross-border payments by Swift
• OneKey Banking by Treasury Prime

Launched in 2019, Singapore-headquartered CargoAi remains the first and only air freight booking platform that uses data and AI to provide air cargo digital solutions for forwarders, airlines and general sales agents (GSAs).

While making a real-time cargo reservation online has become much easier in recent years, bureaucracy and other obstacles made it difficult to pay for the space—until CargoAi launched its unique payment solution, CargoWALLET, in February.

Founder and CEO Matt Petot says it took two years to design, build and test the platform. CargoWALLET connects with modern banking and payment providers to collect more than 30 currencies at the same cost as a bank transfer, providing supply chain financing solutions to freight forwarders with up to 60-day payment terms. CargoWALLET is a standalone solution that has been first validated on the company’s marketplace, CargoMART, but can be integrated into any airline, GSA or freight forwarder process flow.

CargoWALLET is tailored to empower small to medium-size freight forwarders. Shipments can be booked and paid for without an International Air Transport Association (IATA) Cargo Account Settlement Systems number, without an air waybill (AWB) and without any bank guarantee. Airline schedules, including cargo capacity, are displayed on CargoMART and freight forwarders can check schedules and compare rates in real time, then request quotes and make bookings via the platform.

“Not only does air cargo booking become more seamless, but the entire procurement from search, quote, booking and now payment can be done within minutes on just one interface,” says Magali Beauregard, chief customer officer at CargoAi. That means stakeholders of all sizes can “connect with each other in the digital air freight ecosystem and stay ahead in digital adoption.”

Data analytics provider FICO has been awarded 12 patents related to digital decisioning in the areas of blockchain model governance, AI and ML technology. Better insights result in better decisions, the company believes, and its patents pipeline shows how to keep pace with advanced analytics while maintaining a responsible approach to AI and ML.

Efficient Association of Related Entities identifies and tracks associations between related entities in a distributed computing environment to determine those known to be involved in fraud. Blockchain for Data and Model Governance is a shared ledger that tracks end-to-end provenance of the development, operationalization and monitoring of ML models in an immutable manner. Providing Insights About Dynamic Machine Learning Models encompasses the use of visual indicators of features and training data, along with global or local explanations, to provide a broader summarization of an ML model’s behavior.

Other new FICO patents address missing data, systems security and money laundering detection. Facial Recognition for User Authentication describes a system that continually scans facial movements indicative of the user’s liveness, as opposed to static representations. Deployment of Self-Contained Decision Logic delineates a process for generating executable code associated with a decision logic and making it amenable to storage in a repository.

A culture of innovation has helped FICO to develop unique intellectual property in AI operationalization, model governance and ML, driving “the operationalization of responsible AI capabilities,” says Scott Zold, the company’s chief analytics officer. That, in turn, “powers better decisions, increases revenue and provides more rewarding customer experiences for businesses worldwide.”

SAP launched Fioneer Embedded Finance as a Service (EFaaS) in March; it is the first B2B embedded finance platform that facilitates orchestration between SAP users and financial service institutions. The latter connect to SAP’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) processes, enabling customers to develop innovative embedded finance solutions tailored to their corporate clients’ specific needs, all on one centralized platform.

“As B2B trade is increasingly digitized, the expectation is to embed relevant financial services natively within the context of that business transaction,” notes Vishal Shah, head of Embedded Finance at SAP Fioneer. This trend is fueling innovation across both physical and financial supply chains. “Traditional financial institutions leverage these B2B channels as cost-efficient distribution channels,” says Shah. “Emerging fintechs unlock new business models. And this timely and efficient access to a much-needed financial service ultimately helps companies remain financially and operationally resilient.”

EFaaS support several use cases, including buy now pay later (BNPL), request to pay (R2P), purchase order finance and invoice finance. “B2B payment offerings that help improve accounts payable and accounts receivable operations are proving the most popular,” says Shah. “Now, financial institutions are focused on delivering more digital and on-time financial services to the corporate treasury.” As a next step, he predicts, financial institutions will extend their offerings to enterprise sales and the procurement function.

Innovations at SWIFT come thick and fast. But with 105 countries currently exploring centralized digital currencies, SWIFT’s efforts to devise an interoperable transactions process for both central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and existing financial infrastructure and to enable asset tokenization stood out from its other innovations last year.

Following a successful eight-month trial involving the technologies and currencies of several central banks and commercial banks, SWIFT announced in October that it had solved the problem of interoperability in cross-border transactions by bridging different distributed ledger technology (DLT) networks and existing payment systems, “allowing digital currencies and assets to flow smoothly alongside, and interact with, their traditional counterparts.” SWIFT then deployed the new solution in a sandbox environment and opened it up to 18 central and commercial banks to test it over a 12-week trial period.

“Innovation is always an iterative process,” Nick Kerrigan, head of innovation execution at SWIFT, said during a recent LinkedIn Live session. “So, the more we can learn from each other, the better.”

SWIFT aims to forestall fragmentation of the digital payments system, Kerrigan says, as central banks look to CBDCs to solve social and economic challenges, variations of technology standard protocols and even differences between retail and wholesale banking.

“Interoperability should be designed from an early stage, rather than thought about afterward,” Kerrigan argues, “because we don’t want to have disconnected digital islands. We want to have instant and frictionless payments, and for that to be smooth—whether it’s with a CBDC or whether it’s with some other form of digital currency or a traditional form of fiat currency.”

SWIFT also carried out a successful, separate trial with Citi, clearing house Clearstream and Northern Trust on “tokenized’ assets,” demonstrating how traditional assets such as stocks and bonds can be transformed into digital tokens that can then be issued and traded in real time.

Treasury Prime is a banking-as-a-service (BaaS) company based in San Francisco that connects banks and fintechs through an API. The launch of OneKey Banking in March enables Treasury Prime customers to use instant cross-bank transfers (network transfers) to access a bank network that consists of over 15 financial institutions.

As companies mature, their growth can outpace their BaaS solution. OneKey Banking allows customers to develop embedded banking solutions with multiple bank partners, manage deposits among banks and diversify risk, all via a single, unified API interface. Enterprises can choose the best banking partner for a particular product or service and move money between banking partners instantly.

“OneKey Banking brings us that much closer to our vision of creating a de facto banking standard for our partner banks,” says Chris Dean, Treasury Prime CEO and co-founder. “An enterprise can treat its partner banks as a true network.”

If a customer is building a product at their current sponsor bank that is missing a critical feature, they can simply try another Treasury Prime banking partner. Similarly, if a company requires more deposit capacity to support its growth, it can get it by accessing another Treasury Prime banking partner.

With thanks to Global Finance.

 

Ask this to any business leader, and there is a long silence.

But it’s probably the most important question you could ask.

Investors are desperate to know where companies are heading, not just how they are surviving. Wouldn’t you if investing your money? Employees want to know there is hope amidst chaos. Customers want to know what’s next. Society wants to believe that business is will and wants to do better.

How do you see the future?

Where to start? With the positive or negatives? A quick rundown of the existing business strategy, which they probably have less and less confidence in? Or a deep-sigh, followed by the challenge of leading in an uncertain world. Volatile, complex, where focus, making choices, delivering results, are ever harder.

Most organisations, and their leader, are not future-ready.

Uncertainty is normality. The world is not going to miraculous stabilise, find a new steady state. The disruption of technologies, its implications for business and customers, but also geopolitical power and economic dynamics, is profound. And will continue to grow. Exponentially.

So while “thinking like a futurist” may sound nice, it is now a necessity.

In business we get obsessed with numbers, seeking to support decisions with highly-tuned business cases. But uncertain futures are qualitative not quantitive. Trying to put accurate numbers on it is pointless. Better is to combine imagination and intuition with logic and interpretation.

However futurists are not dreamers, astrologers, or sci-fi writers.

They are real navigators, using insight – or let’s call it foresight – anchored in the emergent patterns of today. Newness typically occurs in the margins, so this is where deviant behaviours – or rather early adaptors and innovative ideas – emerge. Connect them together and you start to get patterns.

Pattern recognition is the foundation of sense-making.

Futurists don’t predict the future, but they do help you make sense of it. They uses trends and signals to articulate patterns. They build scenarios of potential future states, and thereby help decision makers to understand the alternatives, the risks and benefits, and therefore make better decisions.

Trends

Here are some more resources which may help

How does the turmoil of recent years give leaders an unprecedented opportunity to redesign global strategies and systems and to “remobilize” toward a smarter, more resilient, and equitable future?

How can leaders faced with tremendous global upheaval create more resilient and trustworthy systems?

In the new book The Great Remobilization, my good friends and business school colleagues Mark Esposito, and Terence Tse (along with coauthor Olaf Groth, and research partner Dan Zehr) diagnose tectonic shifts in the global economy with an eye toward designing a smarter “operating system” for the world.

Through their FLP-IT (forces, logic, phenomena, impact, and triage) framework for strategic leadership, the authors chart a path forward, providing guidance for a new breed of “design activist leader.”

Focusing on key tectonic shifts they call the Five Cs they examine the implications that new forces and logics will have on countries, organizations, and individuals:

• Covid and pandemic management
• cognitive economy and crypto
• Cybersecurity
• Climate change and carbon management
• China

Drawing from one hundred interviews and conversations with top-level executives, entrepreneurs, policymakers, diplomats, generals, scholars, and other leading experts from around the world, the authors show how to create new inclusive visions with the aim of rebuilding the trust that will allow for both human and economic growth.

The Great Remobilization  illustrates the rare opportunity that we have in this historic moment to actively redesign our fragile, overpressurised global systems and develop new strategies and leadership approaches for the future.

More about FLP-IT

The FLP-IT framework sets out a series of analytical steps that will help individuals and organizations make better sense of the current environment, and then begin to turn the threats and opportunities they identify into growth going forward:

• Forces: Understand the new forces, or the amplification of existing forces that create critical uncertainties and impact our lives and businesses. For example, what tech providers are positively or negatively impacted by the pandemic? Will new political administrations in the U.S. and Europe elevate or depress regulation of the digital economy and society? What will emerge from advancements in cutting-edge technologies that were unleashed by the pandemic? A fuller understanding of these new forces will help you more accurately assess how current events are transforming the settings in which firms operate and reshaping the business landscape.
• Logic: As you gain a better sense for these key forces, determine the new and emerging logic developing in our societies, industries and fields. These days it is particularly cliche to hear about the “new normals” with which we need to cope, so look instead for the evolving logics that explain the evolution of your environment. Will our economies, industries and lives bounce back quickly once a vaccine is approved, or will we struggle to recapture growth and vitality? Will we be stuck to a geometry of crisis (e.g. the V-shape, W-shape, or Elongated Bathtub)? If we do roar back, how will we normalize business and society? Will we live in an era of continuous “Coronomics,” with a faster oscillation between contraction and expansion as every new virus and non-virus disruption hits? Will technocracies triumph as other countries drift toward populism and away from science?
• Patterns: With a sense of the logic at play in these turbulent times, visualize the new patterns and phenomena emerging from interactions between actors in your world. Who gains and who loses? Which business models will prevail? How will a decentralized supply chain change marginal revenue and costs? Will cities suffer brain drains as virtual work nomads seek new physical spaces, and will this phenomenon change spending, consumption and taxation? How will education and training change to allow workers far more flexibility to learn and earn simultaneously? And how will a hybridized workforce compete with the vibrancy of brick-and-mortar economies, mainly in the developing markets, as consumption and social interactions stagger.
• Implications: Now, draw conclusions about the implications these forces, logics ( multiple plausible futures) and patterns will create for your company, community and family. For businesses, this might come in the form of a value chain impact assessment based on observations gleaned from the FLP steps in this framework. Where are the vulnerable links in the value chain, and where are the new opportunities to strengthen and diversify it? What specialized platforms might emerge, or what technologies could you develop in-house to enhance smart procurement and supply chains as the world moves toward a more systematic acceptance of open and frugal solutions?
• Triage: The true value of identifying the implications of these forces, logics and patternsemerges from the development of a new portfolio of business activities, units and products that can respond to discontinuities with greater adaptability. To realize that value, though, you have to triage the existing elements of your portfolio. This might require the elimination of portfolio elements that cannot adapt to a constantly shifting “non-normal” – or at least accommodate a reality in which radical transformation will periodically occur. This frees up capital and attention that then provides oxygen for activities that are less rigidly pegged to one type of normal or one dimension (e.g. outside versus inside, digital versus physical, domestic versus international, or centralized versus dispersed). To that end, we recommend a focus on the use of digital technologies and new materials science to transform assets for utility in different market realities, such as selective lockdowns, changing health and hygiene policies, or the ebbs and flows of cross-border transactions. 

FLP-IT in action

The triage process is a logical destination for the entire FLP-IT framework. Indeed, we designed FLP-IT to integrate assessment, foresight and action in a way that helps individuals and businesses generate the kind of flexible growth that portfolio adaptability provides in a VUCA world – no matter how long the down cycles last or how widely the balances shift between digital and physical presence. Most portfolio triage decisions will be determined by the specific business, competitive arena or industry in question, but there are some generalizable recommendations we can make already. Each of the following recommendations offers an internal productivity investment or an opportunity for new actors to innovate and develop new solutions – and ultimately build more resilience in traditional and digital actors alike. How you apply these will vary based on who you are or, more importantly, who you want to become as you step through and emerge from the crisis:

• Build healthcare surveillance into your operational model: The emerging future of work will necessitate new combinations of virtual and physical presence. “Hyperflex mode,”  or the constant toggling between physical and digital, will become a key operating principle for most businesses. This will not be possible without steady vigilance for worker wellbeing and the resulting assurance of productivity.
• Invest in remote facilities operations and new transaction processes between collaborators: New health and hygiene requirements will require more monitoring and command-and-control technologies for fabrication sites. Managers will need new digital/hybrid leadership techniques. And marketing and sales teams will need to craft new partnerships for event management, “edutainment,” and other solutions that foster human intimacy and help replace physical rapport-building protocols.
• Increase supply chain redundancy and resilience: Working with AI-driven smart supply chain functionality providers (e.g. SAP Ariba, Coupa, Ivalua, Gep, Jaggaer or Oracle) can help companies gain intelligence on the health of their procurement processes and various vendors. This will enable faster switching and, with that, greater supply security.
• Reconfigure your service or product delivery: Organizations will need to minimize human touch points and exposure to infections, putting special attention to the value proposition of new service or product delivery modalities. This plays into the emerging trend of “everything at a safe distance,” which generates new customer and employee intimacy problems for brands.
• Consider new life-management solutions: Social distancing is straining relationships and finances are getting stretched by the loss of customers, jobs and furloughs. Meanwhile, the cybersecurity of both enterprise and home networks becomes more enmeshed and, potentially, less secure.. Software solutions that manage the new volatility on all these fronts will find their markets.

We won’t see a simple “new normal”,  more likely we will need to adjust to a series of frequently changing “new normals” as we prepare ourselves for a world in constant transformation. Rather than hoping in vain for a return to what we once knew or giving in to the pain of what’s lost, we need to flip our gaze forward, embrace the uncertainty, and adjust our strategies and activities. The FLP-IT model does that, so we can triage our portfolios in ways that generate tangible value for the businesses and individuals we encounter each day.

More

• Recode: why business needs a new code for success
• Summarising the best new ideas for business leaders
• New books, in search of better ideas and impact
• Inspiring keynotes and workshops for business leaders

 

Working together sounds obvious. “Of course we do” every organisation will reply, especially the leadership team.

But then you have somebody who thinks they’re an expert and can do better, or that there is no time to debate and build consensus, or that collaboration will lead to compromise, bureaucracy and inaction.

Occasionally individual action can be more effective, and is still cherished by many alpha-male dominated teams. But mostly, collaboration leads to better results.

Businesses today exist in a complex, intricately networked world full of greater uncertainty and higher velocity than at any other time in the business world. This is very different from the old, stable world where little changes, and stability and efficiency are the goal.

Now it’s about making sense of relentless change, to share a bigger sense of purposeful direction, supported by ongoing innovation and transformation. Organisations have responded by shifting from old hierarchical structures that retain control, to flatter, matrix-like structures. More agile, decentralised, faster and resilient.

Collaborative teams are often considered better for several reasons, and these benefits extend to both the individuals within the team and the organization as a whole. Here are some key benefits

• Diverse Perspectives: Collaboration brings together individuals with diverse backgrounds, skills, and perspectives. This diversity fosters creativity and innovation, as different viewpoints contribute to more robust problem-solving and decision-making processes.
• Increased Productivity: Collaborative teams can often achieve higher levels of productivity. When team members work together seamlessly, tasks are completed more efficiently, and the collective effort can lead to quicker project completion.
• Enhanced Problem-Solving: The synergy of collaborative efforts enables teams to tackle complex problems more effectively. Combining the knowledge and skills of multiple team members often results in comprehensive and creative solutions.
• Improved Decision-Making: Collaborative decision-making involves input from various team members, leading to well-informed choices. This process not only considers a broader range of perspectives but also increases the likelihood of successful implementation.
• Employee Engagement: Collaborative environments promote a sense of belonging and engagement among team members. When individuals feel that their contributions are valued, they are more likely to be motivated and committed to their work.
• Knowledge Sharing: Collaboration facilitates the sharing of knowledge and expertise among team members. This continuous learning process enhances the overall skill set of the team and contributes to professional development.
• Faster Adaptation to Change: Collaborative teams are often more adaptable to change. The open communication and shared decision-making processes make it easier for teams to adjust strategies and approaches in response to evolving circumstances.
• Increased Innovation: Collaboration is a catalyst for innovation. When team members feel free to share ideas without fear of criticism, it creates an environment where creativity flourishes, leading to the development of novel solutions and approaches.
• Effective Communication: Collaborative teams prioritize clear and open communication. This not only reduces misunderstandings but also ensures that everyone is on the same page, working towards common goals.
• Employee Satisfaction: Working in a collaborative team often enhances job satisfaction. The sense of camaraderie, mutual support, and shared achievements contribute to a positive work environment.
• Agility and Flexibility: Collaborative teams are more agile and flexible in responding to changing priorities. The collective intelligence of the team allows for quick adaptation to new challenges and opportunities.
• Building a Learning Culture: Collaboration encourages a culture of continuous learning. Team members are more likely to seek and share knowledge, leading to ongoing professional development.

While collaboration offers numerous benefits, it’s important to note that effective collaboration requires strong leadership, clear communication channels, and a supportive organizational culture. When these elements are in place, collaborative teams can significantly outperform their non-collaborative counterparts.

In many pakeha-led (European) organisations people who are whakahihi (proud) are common, largely because it has been the norm to proclaim individuals as leaders on the basis of their position and pay scale, not on their function or capability.

The collective leadership philosophy demands traits, knowledge, and skills that result in mana being attributed to the whole leadership team. If an individual in the team lacks or loses mana, then group mana is affected.

Working with Japanese companies, like the global drinks business Suntory, or insurance giant Sompo, I see collaborative leadership in strong relief. The belief in oneness, the patient pursuit for consensus, the belief that strong teams can achieve more than the lone individual.

Here are just a few more examples of companies which embrace a strong collaborative leadership culture, and succeed through it.

• Google: Google is renowned for its collaborative culture and innovative work environment. The company encourages open communication, idea sharing, and cross-functional collaboration. Google’s leadership team is known for fostering a culture that values creativity and teamwork.
• Microsoft: Under the leadership of Satya Nadella, Microsoft has undergone a cultural transformation that emphasizes collaboration and inclusivity. The “One Microsoft” philosophy encourages teamwork and cross-departmental collaboration to drive innovation and customer satisfaction.
• IBM: IBM has a long history of promoting collaboration within its teams. The company values diversity and inclusion and encourages employees to work together to solve complex problems. IBM’s leadership has been proactive in creating a culture that supports continuous learning and collaboration.
• Salesforce: Salesforce places a strong emphasis on collaboration and social responsibility. The company’s leadership, including CEO Marc Benioff, has prioritized creating a culture that values equality and philanthropy. Salesforce’s collaborative approach extends to its commitment to the 1-1-1 model, donating 1% of product, 1% of equity, and 1% of employees’ time to community service.
• Toyota: Toyota is often cited as a prime example of collaborative leadership in the manufacturing industry. The Toyota Production System, which emphasizes continuous improvement and employee involvement, is rooted in collaboration. Team members are encouraged to contribute ideas for process improvement, leading to a culture of shared responsibility.
• Procter & Gamble: P&G is known for its collaborative approach to product development and innovation. The company’s leadership values cross-functional collaboration, and teams from different departments work together to bring new products to market. P&G’s collaborative culture has contributed to its success in the consumer goods industry.
• Unilever: Unilever emphasizes sustainability and social responsibility in its business practices. The company’s leadership team collaborates to implement sustainable business practices, and Unilever is known for its commitment to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Here, to simplify, are a few of the differences between traditional and collaborative approaches:

	Traditional Leadership Approach	Collaborative Leadership Approach
View of Organisations	Organisations as machines	Organisations as communities
Structure	Hierarchical, pyramid	Connected networks, flattened structure
Who leads?	Individual managers	A team
Who makes decisions?	Top management	Distributed and aligned with areas of responsibility
Basis for authority	Positional power – based on title	Personal power – based on knowledge and strengths
Communications	Top down, holding on to information, exclusive	Multi-directional, more transparent, inclusive
Diversity and Inclusion	Less likely for multiple cultural influences	More likely for multiple cultural influences
Processes	Directive – people need to be told what to do	Collective – people are capable and trustworthy to do the right thing
Accountability	Buck stops at the top	Shared
Beliefs about success	A few individuals have the skill or talent to create success	Success comes from the diverse perspectives and skills of many

A collaborative leadership team possesses several key attributes that contribute to its effectiveness in fostering teamwork, innovation, and positive organizational outcomes. Here are some essential attributes:

• Shared Vision and Goals: Alignment around a common vision and goals creates a sense of purpose, guiding the team toward a unified direction.
• Open Communication: A culture of transparent and open communication fosters trust among team members. Leaders actively listen and encourage the free exchange of ideas.
• Inclusive Decision-Making: Decision-making involves input from all team members, ensuring a diverse range of perspectives are considered. This inclusivity promotes a sense of ownership and commitment.
• Mutual Respect: Team members value and respect each other’s contributions, recognizing the unique skills and strengths each individual brings to the team.
• Collaborative Problem-Solving: The team engages in joint problem-solving, leveraging collective intelligence to address challenges and find innovative solutions.
• Adaptability: A collaborative leadership team is flexible and adaptable in the face of change. Members are open to adjusting strategies and approaches based on evolving circumstances.
• Empowerment: Leaders empower team members by providing them with the autonomy to make decisions within their areas of expertise. This empowerment builds confidence and commitment.
• Continuous Learning: A commitment to ongoing learning and development ensures that the team stays abreast of industry trends and best practices, fostering a culture of innovation.
• Conflict Resolution Skills: Effective conflict resolution is a crucial attribute. The team addresses conflicts constructively, turning challenges into opportunities for growth and improved collaboration.
• Celebration of Success: Recognizing and celebrating achievements, both big and small, reinforces a positive team culture and motivates members to continue working collaboratively.
• Accountability: Team members hold themselves and others accountable for their commitments. Clear expectations and responsibilities are established to ensure accountability at all levels.
• Emotional Intelligence: Leaders and team members possess high emotional intelligence, understanding and managing their own emotions and empathizing with the feelings of others.
• Diversity and Inclusion: Valuing diversity and promoting an inclusive environment enhances creativity and problem-solving by incorporating a variety of perspectives.
• Feedback Culture: Constructive feedback is given and received regularly, promoting continuous improvement and growth within the team.
• Resilience: The team exhibits resilience in the face of challenges, bouncing back from setbacks with a focus on learning and improvement.

These attributes work in harmony to create a collaborative leadership team that not only achieves its goals but also nurtures a positive and engaging work environment.

Collaboration, of course, is just one dimension of leadership. But it is a crucial one in today’s fast-changing world, where organisations need to constantly think, innovate, implement and transform. Again and again. That needs a team that believes in a direction, and alignment to best utilise talent and resources, and a relentless pursuit of better, and achieving more by achieving it together.

Here’s a sneak preview of Leadership Recoded, available live in your organisation, as a regularly-updated and customised keynote and masterclass:

AI has the power to drive radical new innovation through its ability to analyse vast amounts of data, identify patterns, and generate insights that humans might not easily discern.

The recent advances in generative AI to create new content – to reimagine works of art, to create the best pop songs, or write a novel in minutes – are just some examples of its potential.

ChatGPT (the GPT stands for generative pretrained transformer), developed by OpenAI, gained over a million signups in just five days when launched to the public in late November 2022.

For the last decade “traditional” AI has become a super efficient way to analyse and interpret information.  It’s commercial applications range from Alexa and Siri, to Waymo navigation system that will drive your driverless car, Amazon’s shopping recommendations, Google maps, or Dreambox’ personalised education platform.

Now “generative AI”, like ChatGPT, has made AI more creative. It not only analyses data, but creates new data, new content. While traditional AI excels at pattern recognition, generative AI excels at pattern creation.

AI’s progress is accelerating at incredible pace, its potential becoming more apparent everyday, but also with increasing concerns. Mustafa Suleyman founded Google’s Deepmind, an AI pioneer business, and more recently Inflection AI, which has created a personal chatbot, Pi. In his new book The Coming Wave, he discusses the opportunities and challenges:

Some of the major applications of AI in driving innovation include:

• Data Analysis and Insights Generation: AI can process large datasets quickly and efficiently, uncovering hidden patterns and trends that can lead to innovative insights. This can be applied in various fields, such as healthcare, finance, and marketing, to make informed decisions and develop new strategies.
• Automation and Efficiency: AI-powered automation can streamline tasks that are repetitive and time-consuming for humans. This frees up human resources to focus on more creative and strategic aspects of their work, leading to the development of new ideas and approaches.
• Personalization: AI enables the creation of highly personalized experiences for users. Whether in e-commerce, entertainment, or healthcare, AI algorithms can analyze user behavior and preferences to offer tailored recommendations, products, or services that match individual needs.
• Product and Service Innovation: AI can be used to create entirely new products and services that were previously not possible. For example, the development of self-driving cars, virtual assistants, and personalized medicine are all innovations made possible by AI technology.
• Predictive Analytics: AI can predict future trends and outcomes based on historical data and current patterns. This can assist businesses in making proactive decisions and developing strategies that are ahead of the curve.
• Scientific Discovery: In fields like drug discovery and materials science, AI can analyze complex molecular interactions and simulations, leading to the identification of new compounds and materials that have the potential to revolutionize industries.
• Creative Content Generation: AI algorithms can assist in generating creative content such as art, music, and literature. While not entirely replacing human creativity, AI tools can provide inspiration and novel starting points for artists and creators.
• Natural Language Processing: AI-powered language models can understand and generate human language. This is being used in customer service chatbots, language translation, content generation, and more, contributing to efficiency and global connectivity.
• Healthcare Innovations: AI can analyze medical images, genetic data, and patient records to assist in disease diagnosis, treatment optimization, and drug discovery. This can lead to personalized medicine and improved patient outcomes.
• Environmental Impact: AI can be employed to optimize resource utilization, monitor pollution, and analyze climate data. It plays a crucial role in developing sustainable solutions and mitigating environmental challenges.
• Research and Development: AI can accelerate research by performing complex simulations and experiments in silico, reducing the time and cost required for developing new technologies and products.
• Supply Chain Optimization: AI can enhance supply chain operations by predicting demand, optimizing logistics, and reducing waste, ultimately leading to more efficient and sustainable processes.

Indeed, AI serves as a powerful tool that complements human capabilities, enabling us to innovate faster, make better decisions, and address challenges in ways that were previously unimaginable. At the same, we need to continue to explore and address ethical and societal implications while harnessing the power of AI-driven innovation.

Here are some more real-world examples of how AI is driving new, radical innovation in every sector:

Healthcare:

• Medical Imaging Analysis: AI algorithms, like those developed by companies like Enlitic and Aidoc, can analyze medical images (X-rays, MRIs, CT scans) to assist radiologists in detecting diseases like cancer at an early stage.
• Drug Discovery: Companies like Atomwise use AI to predict the effectiveness of potential drug compounds, accelerating the drug discovery process.
• Personalized Treatment: IBM Watson for Oncology provides personalized treatment recommendations for cancer patients by analyzing vast amounts of medical literature and patient records.

Finance:

• Algorithmic Trading: AI-driven algorithms analyze market data to make high-speed trading decisions, improving efficiency and accuracy.
• Fraud Detection: AI models, such as those used by companies like Feedzai, can detect fraudulent transactions in real-time by identifying patterns and anomalies in financial data.

Transport:

• Autonomous Vehicles: Companies like Waymo and Tesla are developing self-driving cars that use AI to navigate and make real-time decisions, potentially revolutionizing the future of transportation.
• Traffic Management: AI-powered traffic management systems, like those in some cities, optimize traffic flow and reduce congestion based on real-time data. Consider Alibaba’s CityBrain.

Retail:

• Recommendation Systems: E-commerce platforms like Amazon and Netflix use AI to provide personalized recommendations to users, enhancing user experience and increasing sales.
• Visual Search: AI-powered visual search tools allow users to search for products by uploading images, improving the shopping experience.

Manufacturing:

• Predictive Maintenance: AI-enabled sensors can monitor machinery health and predict maintenance needs, reducing downtime and optimizing production processes.
• Quality Control: AI-powered computer vision systems can detect defects in manufacturing processes, ensuring higher product quality.

Education:

• Personalized Learning: AI-driven educational platforms, like DreamBox, adapt content and learning paths to individual students’ needs, improving learning outcomes.
• Language Learning: Apps like Duolingo use AI to personalize language learning experiences and adapt lessons to individual proficiency levels.

Energy:

• Energy Optimization: AI algorithms can optimize energy consumption in buildings, factories, and cities, contributing to energy efficiency and sustainability.
• Climate Modeling: AI models analyze climate data to predict and understand climate change trends, aiding in environmental planning and policy-making.

Entertainment:

• Content Creation: AI-generated art, music, and even writing have emerged as innovative creative tools, such as Jukedeck for music composition.
• Video Game Design: AI can assist in generating game levels, characters, and narratives, enhancing game development processes.

Just a few examples highlighting how AI technologies are driving innovation across diverse sectors, improving efficiency, enabling new capabilities, and creating entirely new opportunities for growth and advancement.